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We’ve all looked at this world and thought, it just doesn’t seem like God’s will is being done. Underneath that thought is a deeper fear that God’s reserve of will and ability runs dry the way ours does. That fear is exactly what Jesus targets when He teaches us to pray “your will be done.”
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts human limitations in will and ability with God’s unlimited storehouse of both. How have you personally experienced times when your own will or ability “ran dry,” and how does reflecting on God’s nature challenge or encourage you in those moments?
Jesus calls us to pray “Your will be done” starting with our own hearts rather than just abstract global issues. What specific areas of your life feel out of conformity with God’s will right now, and how might intentionally praying this petition reshape your daily actions or priorities?
The sermon contrasts two types of Christians: those with an “escapist attitude” who wait for God to fix everything, and those who think they can triumph over Satan’s kingdom on their own. Where do you fall on this spectrum, and how does praying “your will be done” help balance these two extremes?
The banana tree in the pothole illustrates small, faithful acts amid ongoing brokenness. Where do you see “potholes” in the lives of those around you, and what resources or actions has God equipped you with to address them as an ambassador of His kingdom?
Paul urges us in Romans 12:2 to be transformed by the renewal of our minds to discern God’s will. In what practical ways can your church community support one another in moving from knowing God’s will to actively living it out, both in avoiding sin and in doing good?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Of look at that together, and when we come in that day, we’ll start trying to figure out what different people are going to tackle and so on, and that way we’re organized, we get the things done, we have a great time together, we have lunch, which is, you know, I mean, come on, what’s better than a church lunch together? And then we celebrate, and then we move on to the rest of the preparation in our hearts and minds for the Easter season. So anyway, workday coming up in a couple weeks, but God’s Word and the study of it is coming up right now, so let’s go ahead and prepare our hearts for that.
So we are in week three of our study of the Lord’s Prayer. The first week we talked about what it means to pray that God’s name would be made holy, or in some of the translations we’ve been looking at, that God’s name would be honored. Last week, Jim took us into what does it mean to pray that God’s kingdom would come, and these three first petitions, this third one, praying for God’s will to be done, they’ve often been linked together because, as we’re going to see tonight, they are distinct, they’re expressing different parts of an idea, but they’re building, and they’re building someplace really important.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like God’s will is being done on this earth. How many of you at times have thought, it just doesn’t seem like God’s will is being done? Anyone ever feel that way? You look out at this world and you think, it’s not being done, and it feels deserted. If you’ve been watching our decor here at Little Hills over the last few weeks, you’ve noticed we’ve been thawing out from winter. We had our winter forest over by the window and on the altar, and now we have just dead branches. We’re moving deep into Lent, and as we find ourselves there, sometimes it feels like beautiful winter trees, like we had up. Sometimes it feels like, well, maybe there’s a stick of God’s will, but it’s mostly just dead feeling.
Here’s the question when we think about will, on anything really. Do we have the will, and do we have the ability to bring about the will? I was thinking about this this week. We passed last week the second anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and if you follow the news, if you’ve been following just the horrifying scenes from that over the last couple of years, as Russia invaded its neighbor, unprovoked, and then has just killed tens of thousands of people. It’s one of the most brutal wars in memory. It certainly harkens back to World War I and II, and just the devastation in that area. Cities just wiped out, just devastated, where there’s just remnant skeletons of buildings left, and of course, unfortunately, many human skeletons too. I mean, it’s just horrific, horrific.
And when it first happened, you know, at first people were kind of watching and said, well, the people of Ukraine won’t have the will to stand up against Russia. You could see the invasion coming. They’re just going to fold, and they’ll become a Russian client state. It’s just the way it is. And then they stood up, and then the world noticed that, and they saw that the leadership in the people of Ukraine were saying, no, we’re not going to fall under this authoritarian regime. We’re going to stand up. And the world suddenly had a will. The world said, wait a second, we’re going to stand with you, because if you’re going to do this, if you have the ability, then we have the will as well to join in with you.
And so we saw outpouring of support, sending over military supplies, humanitarian supplies, political maneuvering to try to somehow stop this horrible slaughter. All this stuff happening. But there was a fear amongst those who have watched the West, those who watched our own country over the years, and it’s a fear that I think that we’re starting to see more and more, which is that we don’t have a sustainable will. And so, for example, we haven’t had the will to do anything to continue that support in quite a while. And that’s at a national level.
It’s also maybe a personal and non-governmental level. Like, for example, many churches sent over humanitarian supplies. We participate in a humanitarian drive to help the people of Ukraine. But where are we two years later? Do we say, well, I’m bored with that. I want to move on. Do we say, I’m continuing to be horrified by this. I want to continue to have the will. But that’s only one part of the equation. We can have the will for something, but not the ability. And this is the other part of that.
When we think about our Western world, the United States and Europe and Australia and so on, we’ve lived in an era where we don’t really think about long, protracted wars. And we haven’t been building supplies for long, protracted wars. We’re used to things like, we can film a war on TV and it’s almost like an event, right? We roll into some country and do something and then we roll back out of it. And it’s never quite that clean, but we kind of think about it that way.
And part of the problem with having will is, well, wait a second. I mean, I have to keep doing this? You have to keep making stuff? And so one of the things that didn’t happen two years ago is that we didn’t start manufacturing a bunch of new supplies to replace the ones we’re going to send over there, so we could continue to send supplies. And so even if we suddenly had the will right now as a people in the United States, we’re going to send a bunch more supplies because we believe this cause is just. Well, then the next question is, do we actually have the ability to do it?
Too often in life, not just in that situation, but in all kinds of situations, we lack will and ability. Or we lack part of that equation. We have the will to do something for a time, but we don’t have the ability to do it. Or we have the ability to do it, but we don’t have the will. Or some variation thereof. We have the will for a little while and then we get bored. We have the ability to do it for a little while and then we run out, just exactly like what’s happening over there. And we see something horrible, but our storehouses of will and ability run dry. And then we just shut down. It doesn’t matter how horrific the continued carnage is, we don’t have the strength to keep going with it.
And I think as we look at ourselves and we look at our own place where we do that, we wonder, what’s God like? Does God’s storehouse of will and ability also run dry at times? Does he have a certain amount of ability to arm the forces of good and then he’s going to run out and say, enough with you? Or can he keep producing what’s needed?
Now scripture, just to spoil the whole sermon, is very clear over and over again that God has both will and the ability. And yet, I think when we really peer into our minds and we think about what he calls us to do, one of the hardest challenges for us as believers is to believe that in practice. I think if I asked anyone in this room, does God have unlimited will and ability to do the things that he says he’s going to do, I think abstractly everyone would say, well sure, of course.
And yet functionally, when it comes down to it, we think about our own limitations, we think of our own government’s limitations, we think of our broader culture around the world’s limitations, and we apply that to God. God doesn’t want to deal with this any longer. God won’t deal with this any longer, surely.
But here’s why Jesus wants us to pray over and over again about God’s will. He wants us to focus on how God’s will is different than ours. When there’s a just cause, God doesn’t get bored after a year or two. When right needs to be brought into the world, God doesn’t say, well if only I could have accomplished it in this amount of time, I had enough in the storehouses to bring it about, but now I’m out and I haven’t been manufacturing anymore. God doesn’t do that. God has a clear will, and we can know what God’s will is, and then we can know how to proceed because we can know God’s will, and that’s what we see as we pray this.
Your kingdom come, that’s what we looked at last week, but then the second part of Matthew 6:10, your will be done. We’re going to look at on earth as in heaven in just a moment, but we’re just focusing on your will be done in this moment. God has a clear will. We’re not praying for something abstract, and so as we think about that prayer, that petition that Jesus calls us to tonight, let’s go ahead and come before him and ask that he would help us to see the clarity of his will.
Let’s pray. Father, we come before you and we ask that you would help us to the same clarity, the moral clarity, the clarity of focus that you have. On our own we don’t, but Lord, as we look at your word, we see time and again how you stand for what is right and for what is true, and you call your people to do the same. Lord, would you help us to do that? Lord, when we grow weak and weary, would you strengthen us? When we grow distracted, would you refocus us? And in all things, would you help us to focus on you and your grace and your love, for it is only through your grace and love that we are empowered to do anything. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When we ask for God’s will to be done, we’re saying something about what Jim was preaching on last week. We think about it. Jim described two different kingdoms, right? We have the kingdom of the prince of this world, the kingdom of Satan, that wants to take over this world. I was just describing a horrific war, and here’s the thing, friends, I think we can say clearly. When war and destruction are happening like that, Satan’s kingdom is triumphing.
And here’s the thing that doesn’t get covered enough. When Russia invaded the Ukraine, what did they do? They started killing and restricting the freedom of Christians to worship. It’s often covered, somehow it’s gotten broadcast to the United States in reverse. But one of my sort of side little hobbies over the years, I’ve always been interested in Eastern Orthodoxy. Friends, don’t believe what you read. This war is about suppressing the freedom of religion, suppressing the forces of good, even as they put out propaganda to say otherwise. And so what we see here is Satan is coming in and saying, I want this.
When we look in our own country, we see politicians rising up that oppose God and his word. What do we see? We see Satan triumphing. When we, in our own lives, as we drive even to church, and we’re saying unkind things to the people around us, and we’re making our displeasure known, and they see us pulling into church, we are making the kingdom of Satan known. It’s on the high level and the low level.
And then when we think about that great span, we see there’s a kingdom that seems to be winning. We look at this world, you just pull up a newspaper, pull up whatever your favorite news source is, and look at the headlines. It feels like Satan’s kingdom is winning. God’s will isn’t to be found, it would seem like. But when our brother was preaching last week, he mentioned and focused us on the kingdom of heaven, a lasting kingdom. And we think about that, we say, okay, well Satan’s kingdom is triumphing here.
People are killing each other indiscriminately for no reason. People are fighting against the church. Here it is, we’re in the 21st century, and it’s dangerous in many places in the world to be a Christian. Perhaps one of the countries that has the most Christians in the entire world today is China. We don’t know how many millions, but we know there are millions of Christians in China. The reason we don’t know how many is because they have to hide.
We think about that, it seems like the kingdom of Satan is triumphing. Maybe what we need to do as we think about praying for God’s will to be done is to pray that he’d take us up to him and we don’t have to worry about this place. Maybe it just needs to be set off as a radioactive wasteland where God’s kingdom can’t touch. Friends, that’s when we’re falling into that fallacy of thinking that God’s storehouse has run out.
Now, the scripture doesn’t promise that God’s kingdom is going to be fully realized in any one moment that we necessarily will experience in our lifetime. Jesus says we don’t know the day or the hour that he will return, and until the day and the hour that he returns, Satan’s kingdom is going to look awfully powerful. But as we also looked at last week, God has placed embassies here. God has placed ambassadors here. He’s placed us here.
Why has the Church of Jesus grown and grown and grown? No matter how much it’s opposed, whether the fiercest, most powerful empire in the world, like the Roman Empire, fights against it or supports it, whether the greatest power ever known militarily, the United States, is going along with what the Bible says or someday utterly opposes it, it doesn’t matter. The Church will grow. Because even though it looks like Satan’s will is being done, God’s will is more powerful.
So what are we praying for here? Well, we’re praying for that ultimate day where there’s no mistaking whose kingdom is more powerful. That’s certainly part of what we’re praying for here. Someday, imagine this, someday there’ll be a day where we don’t need to compare good to evil any longer, because there won’t be any evil to see any longer. Someday God’s kingdom will so fully and utterly vanquish every drop of evil that we’ll just compare good to good. I don’t even know what that’s really like.
Someday it’s going to happen. Someday, when we’re talking, and God’s presence is the very light of this world, someday we’ll talk and we’ll say, well this is really good, and this is also really good, and this is really good too. And everything will be good because God will make everything right. Someday that will be what it means as we have been praying for God’s will to be applied.
But before that, we don’t want to just focus on that. We don’t want to just have that escapist attitude. We as Christians kind of fall into two errors. One is that escapist attitude. The other is to think somehow we are going to triumph over Satan’s kingdom right now on our own. That doesn’t work either. We always start with the big things. I started with a big thing, right? Big giant war with the mighty militaries of the world lining up. I mean how do we solve that? We need to think about first, how do we solve the much smaller issues? Because God doesn’t call us to solve the big geopolitical issues on our own. What does he call us to do? He calls us to turn our hearts to Him.
And so when we pray, your will be done. Yeah, we are praying. Yes, we want it to be that the governments of the world would do what’s pleasing to God. That our own government would do what’s pleasing to God. That our own communities would do what’s pleasing to God. But what we really are praying, first and foremost, is that we ourselves would do what’s pleasing to God. We say God’s will is clear. If we read God’s Word, okay, there’s plenty of times we have conversations. We say, well, I’m trying to discern if God wants me to do this or that, and I don’t really find that specifically in Scripture. And yes, sometimes God wants us to pray, and discern, and wait, and act, and try things, and so on.
But for so much of what we have struggled with, it actually is clear in the Scriptures. It’s just that we don’t want to hear it. There’s no mistaking what the Scriptures say on so many issues. And even when we say, well, it doesn’t seem clear, it actually is clear. And if anyone else said it, it would be utterly clear what they thought. We just don’t want to be clear because we don’t want to have to do what God has called us to do.
And when we pray your will be done, the first thing we’re praying is a challenge to ourselves. We’re saying, God, bring your Holy Spirit into my life and challenge me. Because yes, I would like your will to be done in Ukraine. Yes, I’d like your will to be done in the American government. Yes, God, I want your will to be done in the denominations and the non-denominational churches all across the United States where people actually reflect the goodness and godliness that you call us to. But how often do I pray that? And what I don’t really mean to pray is, God, do those things in my own heart.
If every Christian, as we prayed that prayer, or we used it as a template, and we prayed in our own words, but prayed, God, your will be done. If every Christian, every time we did that, if we were really yearning for God’s will to be done in our own lives, imagine how different the world would be. It’s really easy when it’s big and abstract things that we have no power over because we can pray those things and think, well, okay, I’ve handed over to God and there’s nothing I can do about it.
When we say, God, I know that my own heart is out of conformity with you. I know if I just look at your Word, I can see the places where I am not doing what’s pleasing to you. I know what the fruit of the Spirit are in Galatians 5. I also know the things that are listed right before that aren’t good, and I know that I run into them. We all do. What if we just started there and say, God, I want the sin out of my life. I want your will to be what shapes me. I don’t want the world to shape me. I don’t want celebrities to shape me. I don’t want the latest trend to shape me. I want you to shape me.
That’s the challenge we find here. Paul writes in Romans chapter 12 verse 2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That’s where we start.
Now that doesn’t mean we don’t care about the big things. Like, for example, we talk about missions giving and supporting different causes in this church. We should do that, and I hope that we give another round of support at some point to the people of Ukraine, for example. We should be concerned about that. We should be concerned about suffering, and we can practically look at, well, what can we do?
Well, we can’t solve a war. World leaders are not calling Little Hills Church and saying, come over and mediate this conflict and fix it for us. But we can send some money that buys a box of supplies so someone doesn’t starve. We can help sponsor a doctor who’s doing reconstructive surgery for the various soldiers that are maimed in the war. We can do those sorts of things.
Last year, when we did support that effort, we did so through an effort to build wood stoves for people that, like us, aren’t really equipped to lose the basic creature comforts like electricity. They have furnaces like we do that don’t work very well when suddenly there’s no power. And so what happened? Well, a bunch of Christians got together, and we got to be an itty-bitty part of that process of building stoves so those people could stay warm. And when they were given that stove, they were told that Christians around the world were banding together to help them, to show the love of Jesus to them.
And that’s the beauty of that, because, see, it’s dealing with the issue at a level that we can deal with it ourselves. We can’t fix it on our own, but we can contribute what God’s given to us, and we can in that also then communicate what God ultimately gives to us, because that’s what people absolutely need. But they can’t hear that if we’re not caring, as James points out, for their basic needs. And so when we pray that God’s will be done, what he’s saying is, have it reshape me and have those big issues, those ones I don’t know how to deal with, be brought down and help me to see the bite-sized chunk that you’re putting in front of me, Lord, that I can do.
When we think about that, one of the ways we start to be aware of that is simply to get to the point where we understand how out of conformity we are. And yet we’re so focused on how things are broken, we just don’t even get there.
I read about a man by the name of Brian Raymond. He’s a small business owner in Florida, and his business is situated on a street that turned out—I don’t think he knew this when he bought the building—on a private street. It’s not maintained by the city or county. And so his business opened, and then he was watching. He could see his customers driving up and driving into these giant potholes that were damaging their cars.
And so he called up the city, you know, can you fix these potholes? And they said, well, not our problem. And here he is, a small business owner. He didn’t have the means to repair this road himself. I guess there wasn’t really a will amongst the rest of the people on that street to fix the potholes. And so he could have just said, well, I guess I just tell everyone to get off-road vehicles to come to my business.
What did he do instead? Well, this is Florida. He could plant a banana tree, he decided. And so he bought a banana tree and planted it right in the middle of the pothole so someone wouldn’t drive through it. And I saw this, and I thought, well, isn’t this really creative? Because he did two things there. First off, he drew attention to the danger so people wouldn’t drive into it. And he did it in such a bizarrely wonderful way that not only did he keep people from damaging their car, he makes people smile as they drive down the street, and all of a sudden there’s a banana tree in the road.
Not everyone loved it, but as I look at it, I thought, here is someone who said, I can’t fix the overall problem. It’s too big for me. It’s a global war. I can’t fix this. I don’t have the money to repair the street. I’m just a small business owner, but I can put something there so people won’t damage their car, and I can put something there that maybe even would make people smile. And those are the sorts of things that we can do. Those are the sorts of things that we’re praying, God, would you enable me to do? To go from dwelling in my own sin, dwelling in my own selfishness, to thinking about how do I actually implement parts of your will in the world around me, like good ambassadors do? Let people feel the kingdom of God.
We’re not going to fix all the problems of the chaos and the anger of the kingdom of Satan, but we can plant some banana trees. Where are our potholes on the road that’s around us? Where are those potholes that we watch our family and friends and neighbors, their co-workers, they’re driving down the road and damaging their cars, and we have that banana tree sitting in a pot? We have the Holy Spirit giving us ability to do something.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, are we really willing to say, God, I know you’ve given me ability. You’ve given me whatever strength I have in my body, whatever talents I have in my body. You’ve given me provision, whether it comes from work or I’ve saved up in retirement, I have some retirement funds or whatever it might be. I have some means, I have some things I can do. How do I take those things and fill in some potholes? How do I do something that shows people hope for something better? Because in this moment, it might be that we could be millennia away from Jesus actually returning. He could be back tomorrow, we don’t know.
But what we do know is that God’s will should be done every single day. And so, how today can you, how today can I, show God’s will? Jesus is saying, pray about that every single day. Pray about that as you come to your Heavenly Father.
Jim last week mentioned that we should be faithful, obedient, authentic, and effective Christians. And that’s basically what we’re describing here. Because if we’re going to be faithful and obedient, what are we doing? We’re doing things to show God’s love to the world. We’re sharing the gospel, and we’re also sharing and helping people with their earthly needs. We’re doing both of those in tandem. If you only do one, you’re not really doing God’s will. It’s like putting the banana tree next to the pothole, and people dodge the banana tree and still go in the pothole.
When we say, whatever God’s equipped me to do, I’m going to help with the different aspects of this problem. I’m going to bring the banana tree out there, and then I’m going to plant it in the pothole. That is us following the Holy Spirit, saying, God, I want to see those potholes. I want to see how the things you’ve given me enable me to deal with those potholes. I want to be effective as a Christian. I don’t want to sit here in church. It’s good that we sit here in church. I don’t want to just sit here in church. I want to help. I want to actually reflect your will in this world.
But we might say, but isn’t that fruitless? You can plant a banana tree in that pothole, but there’s just gonna be more potholes. Satan has a pothole puncher. He’s just coming down the road punching potholes into the road. I mean, what good does it do? Will it ever do any good?
Yes, we can abstractly affirm that God has an unlimited storehouse of will and ability, but do we believe it? Because here’s the important thing as we pray for God’s will to be done, that we understand that he has an able will, a will that will get things done. We can see God’s will being done. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God’s bringing heaven to earth isn’t abstract.
We can over spiritualize it. We can turn it into something very abstract where, yes, things are good in heaven, things are bad on earth. Someday, good comes to earth. That’s nice. And then it doesn’t actually change anything.
And so often we get tangled up in thinking that the current regime, Satan’s regime, is too strong. And so why even try? Now, there will be more potholes in that road, but there’s a time of relief there that that man provided by planting that banana tree. There are going to be potholes in the lives of everyone around us and in our own life, but what are we seeking to do? We’re seeking to help alleviate some of that. Not all of it. We’re not the Savior. We’re not the one who’s going to restore the world. We’re saying, God, allow me to be someone who offers a cool, refreshing drink when someone’s parched. Help me to show a bit of God’s love when people only see anger and hate. Help me show some hope when everyone only sees despair.
And sometimes that’s a lot more effective than we think it is. Because we do those little things that don’t last. Even if that man had the money to actually repave the road, it won’t last forever. But as we show even a temporary relief from the problems that are in this world, what happens? Well, God changes things. And what He changes most of all is people’s hearts.
When they see kindness being provided, when they see love being provided, what happens? God takes that kindness, that love, and He draws people into the kingdom. He draws people into the hope of the world. He helps people to know that there’s more coming. That it isn’t inevitable that there’s always just potholes.
And that’s the key story that we see in Daniel. We looked at Daniel last week, and we looked at some of his encounter with King Nebuchadnezzar. And I want to take us back to an earlier part of King Nebuchadnezzar’s life where he had a dream. He dreamt of different empires that seemed to look very mighty. But here’s the thing, there was only one empire that was lasting.
It says in Daniel chapter 2 verse 44, “In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”
When we do what is right, when we run after the will of God, it tells people there is something so strong and so mighty, it can look like Satan has the strength and the power. It can look like Satan has the glory in this world, but he doesn’t. For 2,000 years Satan has sought to destroy Jesus’s church. The church is bigger today than it was 2,000 years ago by far. The church is bigger than it was a thousand years ago. There are more believers on earth today than there were 50 years ago.
Think about that for a moment. When it looks like Satan is triumphing, and the very fact that God has established and grown his church, we see that his kingdom is coming, and it will roll over Satan’s best attempt to fight it.
And we see all that in the resurrection of Jesus. First Corinthians 15. We need some patience, and that’s what Paul’s saying here. But each in his own order. Christ the firstfruits with his resurrection. Then it is coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he’s put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet, but it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him, and put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
You see, when Jesus was resurrected, I believe Satan had been spending the last few days before that celebrating. He thought he’d won. But then when Jesus was resurrected, I still believe that Satan didn’t really get it. Satan looked and he said, okay, so Jesus is going back to his father. There’s a bunch of idiots down here that are supposed to communicate the message he’s been teaching. No problem. And Satan continues to fall into that trap.
He looks at the church today, and he sees our faults and our foibles, both on the local church level and the broader church level. He says, I’ve got this, no problem. This time, this time God’s going to fall.
But what’s Paul referring to there? He’s saying that as we look at God’s Word, as we see the testimony that Jesus has risen from the grave, and that Jesus has offered his righteousness to us, the fact that he overcame death is a preview of how Satan and his kingdom, the kingdom of death, ultimately will be completely vanquished, brought totally under God’s subjection.
That there won’t be a single drop, a single space of Satan’s authority left. It starts with that prayer that God’s name would be made holy. As we pray that prayer, as we think about that, and we say, God, make your name holy. We recognize that it already is, and we’re just praying that it would be honored in this world. We’re saying the authority of God’s name needs to go from every single corner of the earth. Go all the way around it. Go up and down every place from the bottom to the top that God’s name should be there, because his name is the name of power and glory and honor.
When we look to his kingdom in heaven, and we say, well, it’s good up there, what we’re saying is that, but if God can hold back Satan there, and ultimately bring that kingdom into this world, Jesus come into this world, he could send his followers into this world, and Satan can’t stop them, that we see the preview, the firstfruits, that yes, his will can ultimately be fully done, that his storehouses are not empty. They’re not going to be empty.
So important that we keep reflecting on that as we pray for God’s will to be done, because when we fall into that trap of thinking, well, maybe it won’t work, maybe it can’t happen, we quit really clocking in and putting all of our effort into God’s kingdom, because if it can’t happen, there’s no reason to waste our time doing it. We’re just passing time until we return to him.
I want to tell you the story of two mailmen, and this is a true story, and it’s an actual story playing out in my life right now, because I regularly interact, or at least interact with the work of two different mail carriers, one at home and one here at Little Hills.
Now, some of you have already heard me talk about our mail carrier here at Little Hills. His name is Michael. He is the best mail carrier I think I have ever met. He takes his work incredibly seriously, and that includes the various side projects, and I’m going to talk more in a few weeks about how we’re going to participate in the letter carrier mail drive, or can drive again, and collect cans to pass off to him, and he’s so excited when we’ll help him with that, because he wants to collect as many cans to feed the hungry in our community as possible.
But it’s just the day-to-day letter carrying that he does, too, that he cares deeply about. Have you ever actually had a mailman call you to let you know that your mailbox was full? I’ve had that happen, because if this mailbox gets too full, he will call me or text me and let me know, hey, you need to check that mailbox. There’s something in there. I don’t want to get hurt. I mean, this is a man who goes above and beyond.
Now, I’m not going to name him. I actually don’t even know the name of the mailman who delivers to my house, but he approaches things a little differently. He gets into his truck, and he doesn’t seem to want to get out of it, and so if a package comes that’s larger than the mailbox, instead of getting out and bringing it to the porch, and certainly instead of contacting me so something doesn’t get hurt, he attempts to change the physics of the mailbox and bring it in as if it were a black hole that could just suck in anything, and it won’t matter.
And that mailbox is starting to get bent by the fact that he is determined not to get out of the truck. He doesn’t want to put in any extra effort, although it seems like an awful lot of effort to do that, and there are some times where I’ve wondered, will this package even come out of the mailbox? Another time, the package came, and it clearly could not be put in the mailbox at all, so what did he do? He leaned it against the garage door, so it fell in the car when the garage door went up.
This is a man who doesn’t want to put in the effort. We can say, well, that’s really bad. That’s really us. Because we look at God’s will, we know that his will is for the mail to be delivered properly. His will is for the packages to make it to the recipients without being damaged, and yet so often we say, but it’s never going to work anyway. People aren’t going to appreciate it, so I’m just gonna jam it in this mailbox and forget it. If I call the person up, they’re not going to respond anyway. If I take the time to interact with them, it’s not going to matter anyway. If I fill in that pothole, there’s just gonna be another one.
It doesn’t matter. God says it does matter. He calls us to do his will, not to calculate how much of an impact it’s going to have, because God knows what the impact is going to be, and oftentimes, even in our lifetime, we may not. As I tell you that story, I don’t think our mailman here, Michael, has any idea how much he’s appreciated. I’ve mentioned it to him a number of times, but I imagine everyone he delivers mail to and puts that effort into, does he really understand how much he’s doing by doing that? And yet he does.
And our challenge as we go into the world and we do our calling is we anticipate, how is God saying, take sin out of your life, lean on my Holy Spirit, use my power to resist it? Is he saying, show love to your neighbor, show kindness to the stranger, show patience with the people that test our patience? You might not think it’s doing any good, but God is saying, I have that part under control. My kingdom is going to come. My storehouse is not running out. I have plenty of supplies.
And someday every single bit of evil will be vanquished. But what I want you to do right now is to say, I’m not going to focus primarily on my own success, my own comfort. I’m not going to primarily focus on the things I think are going to get results. I’m not going to focus on what I think is going to make myself happy. I’m going to focus on what God says is good. Take away the sin so I can do your work, O Lord. Shape my will so that it’s not just that I’m not sinning, but I’m doing good, O Lord.
And God will in his power bring about the fullness of that will. God’s will, God’s kingdom, his holy name. How do we see all these first three petitions played out in this world? We see it by praying it and seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. As he does that, he brings about a preview of everything that will come. It will come fully someday, friends. But today, let’s see it come in our hearts and in our lives. Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, so often I look at your will, and I know what’s pleasing to you, and I find reasons not to do it. So often I look at things I think you would say were good, but I think it won’t work anyway. I don’t need to do that. Help me to understand that you don’t run out of supplies for your kingdom to advance. Help me to understand that you don’t grow bored with the work of redemption.
Help all of us to understand those things, that we would stand firm for what is true and what is right, what is just. In our own lives, we would find the sin in our lives as abhorrent as you do, that we would look at it and it would trouble us so deeply that all we would want is, as we pray, your will be done, that you would give us the strength to run from it. Help us as we grow weary, we grow lazy, we grow misfocused, that you would redirect us, and that you would help us not only to avoid sin, but to do good.
And to do it not because we know that some grand world-saving thing is going to happen in this very moment, but that you’ve simply called us to do the next thing in the calling that you’ve given us individually, and it may seem like it does nothing at all, but we know that you are the God of all power and glory, and that you can take the things that we do, as meager as they may be, and use them for good.
Help us to rest in that truth, that we might truly be those effective Christians, those Christians that move forward with confidence that you will bring your will into this world, and ultimately the entire world will be subject to you. But right now, you’re calling us to be subject to you. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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